The tendency for ghosts or otherwise deceased characters, sometimes other types of The Undead, to forget the details of their former lives. Common things forgotten are: their cause of death, everything but their cause of death, or everything about their former life entirely. It's often a major problem when attempting to accomplish Ghostly Goals. At times, it may be a self-imposed Weirdness Censor / Laser-Guided Amnesia to avoid realizing they died in the first place.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Sayo Aisaka from Mahou Sensei Negima!. In both the original and Negima!?, she says she's forgotten just because it's been quite a long time. She doesn't really want to remember either since she bets it would be pretty depressing. The only anime episode generally agreed to have been quite good was a focus episode for that gave an explanation for her death: She died in World War II during a bombing run when she went outside in a storm to pick flowers for her sister.

All of the shinigami in Full Moon o Sagashite forget about their past lives. Curiously, it seems that ghosts do not. For example, Eichi Sakurai.

Inhabitants of Soul Society in Bleach are sometimes portrayed as forgetting everything about their lives, although this is in no way a consistent portrayal.

It may not be that they immediately forget everything about their past lives. People age extremely slow in Soul Society. It could be that they've been in Soul Society so long (and age so slowly) that they just eventually forget. When Shibata Yūichi's soul was trapped inside of the parakeet, freed and passes on to Soul Society, he remembered Chad when he visited. It kind of implies that memories are maintained as he also tells Chad that he can't locate his mother. At least for a little while. Give him enough time, and he'll move on and blend in just like everyone else.

Hollows, as a general rule, don't seem to remember much about their lives after killing their families; prior to that, they cling to the darker emotions that drove them to transform.

Weaker Hollows may not remember back more than a few months, regardless of when they died.

It's also possible to die as a young child or even a baby (like Rukia), and come to Soul Society like that, then grow up a spirit. In that case they won't remember their living life because they barely had one to remember in the first place. For that matter it's also possible to be BORN a spirit in Soul Society in which case they'd never have had a living life at all.

The titular character of My Lovely Ghost Kana has been dead for years by the start of the manga, and after spending all that time alone, trapped in the abandoned apartment building where she died, she's forgotten most details of her life. She isn't even sure how her name was spelled. She does have a pretty vivid recollection of how she took her own life, but she can't remember why she did it. The upshot of this is it allowed her to develop into a cheerful, energetic girl eager for company, quite the opposite of what you'd expect from the ghost of someone who gruesomely killed herself.

Yu-Gi-Oh!. The pharaoh can't remember anything but gaming; he only even knows he's a pharaoh because other people told him. This seems to have been a semi-explicit part of his Heroic Sacrifice, though. Maybe.

Angel Beats! uses this as a central plot point, since none of the already dead protagonists properly remembers how did they die or what their ghostly goals are... and only can go to the Afterlife when they remember their former lives and work towards passing on in peace.

Some of the ghosts in Rinne have it, and the shinigami sometimes need to figure out what they've forgotten before bringing them to the wheel of reincarnation.

The manga Dusk Maiden of Amnesia has this trope as a central premise. The main plot being a freshman's ability to see a ghost woman named Yuuko and his attempts to seek out the reasoning and perpetrator behind her death in the former building of the Academy.

The Haibane of Haibane Renmei can only remember generic skills, habits, and culture. Any memory specific to their previous lives is forgotten. This includes locations, friends, family, and even their own name. For example, Rakka is riding a bike, and remembers that she usually sings songs while riding, but doesn't know any songs to sing.

In the first Cardcaptor Sakura OVA, Clow Reed's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend (and former student) Mahoudoushi doesn't even realize that she's dead, or that Clow Reed is. This causes a lot of problems for Sakura.

Bokura no Kiseki has the Reincarnation version of this. Nearly all the characters in the series are reincarnated from a set of characters in the distant past. However, all of the reincarnated characters note they have extremely vague memories of how the war they died in started, and many of them can't seem to remember how it was they died. Especially prominent in the priests, who should have been evacuating the area, and thus would've been nowhere near the castle when it fell. (Even Gerald/Midou, who snuck out to the castle anyways, shouldn't have gotten there in time.) The protagonist Harusumi assumes that he's remembered all of his past life Veronica's memories over the years, but with Teshimano's revelation that he remembers seeing Veronica fighting with Lucas, Harusumi realizes that Veronica must have lived beyond the memory that he had always assumed detailed her final moments.

The unnamed protagonist of Death Parade cannot remember her past or how she died. That's normal in Quindecim however people do get their memories back eventually; she is abnormal in that it doesn't come back within a few hours. It isn't until the end that she remembers her past: She was an up-and-coming professional ice skater named "Chiyuki" however she injured her knee. Being unable to skate anymore, she fell into a depression and ended up Driven to Suicide.

Jibanyan from Yo-kai Watch doesn't clearly remember his death. He has facts mixed up. He had forgotten the fact that he committed a Heroic Sacrifice for his owner. He misheard her mourning and thought she said she hated him, when in fact they were best friends and she was crying for him.

Comic Books

In PS238,Satori says that a lot of ghosts have problems like this. Most notably, there's a Native American ghost who haunts the school's lawn—in his case, he was actually cursed for his Pride, stuck in that spot until he saves a life and unable to remember anything that he was arrogant about in life (which was apparently just about everything, including his name). The experience does seem to have humbled him, at least.

In A Pure Formality, the interrogated hero can't remember what he did the evening before, because that's when he committed suicide.

Folklore and Mythology

Common in Greek Mythology and in Asian mythology. In fact, one of the main rivers of the underworld was the Lethe, whose water would explicitly cause amnesia. Drinking fresh blood (animal would do) would break the spell at least temporarily, as seen when Odysseus visited the underworld looking for advice from the by-then dead seer Teiresias in the Odyssey.

In A Fine and Private Place, the ghost Michael Morgan forgets how he died. Ghosts in general gradually forget their lives, and become less detailed and less definite in appearance as they forget what they looked like.

In The Innkeeper's Song, Lukassa is brought back from the dead, but she can't remember anything from before or why this one guy (actually her lover) is so intent on finding her.

In the short story "Spook" as well.

In Dante's Inferno, the damned "remember" the future, but not the past (except, apparently, their own sins, since they speak of those). This is part of the Ironic Hell punishment, since once time ends they will remember nothing at all.

Zombies often remember their pasts better than when they were alive, but in Soul Music, the skull Quoth the raven hangs out on in the wizard's place is pretty sure he used to be a philosopher or a teacher or someone fairly intelligent, but can't remember any of the actual details.

In Neal Shustermann's book Everlost, the ghosts of children who didn't get "where they were going", called Afterlights, roam the earth until the end of time. They usually get a nickname and slowly forget their birth name and their lives.

In The Graveyard Book, while the ghosts remember their pasts quite well, the ghouls have completely forgotten theirs.

Inverted in Johnny and the Dead, where the ghosts remember everything, which is why they're still so attached to Blackbury. They need to forget in order to let go.

In The Dresden Files, ghosts are psychic echoes left behind by the impression of a traumatic death. This means the ghost is basically the person's mind on replay, constantly trying to resolve old business.

Alluded to in The Bible, in an unusual manner. "The former things are passed, nor will they come to mind." Unusual in that, after the Resurrection, everybody is alive, so it doesn't technically fit the parameters of this trope, but it's close enough.

In Warm Bodies the average zombies remember nothing of their past but little of their humanity and spend time trying to guess their former lives from their clothes.

In the Neil Gaiman short story "October in the Chair", the ghost of a little boy is named Dearly... because that's the only word still legible on his extremely faded gravestone. A living boy suggests that "Beloved" was the next word there. Dearly agrees, but doesn't seem too invested in it.

In Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning, the narrator, Bibi Chen, remembers her whole life, but until the very end of the book, can't remember how she died.

In Septimus Heap, ghosts have vivid memories of their former lives. Though as the centuries stack up, they begin to grow more and more senile and forgetful of their past, as they become more and more translucent, to the point where they one day will vanish entirely.

Anna from Anna Dressed in Blood can't remember the details of her death. Cas Lowood helps her remember through a spell.

Ghost Cadet is a kid's novel about the ghost of a cadet from the American Civil War. He fell in battle, then hid his family pocket watch in his last moments so that Union soldiers wouldn't steal it from his corpse. He can't remember where, however, and his spirit can't leave the battlefield until he (or, in this case, the book's living protagonist) manages to find it.

Leigh Perry's ''A Skeleton in the Family" is Sid, a walking, talking skeleton who remembers what it's like to be human and has no problems functioning like one among those who know of his existence, but suffers Loss of Identity up until a chance encounter with someone he knew while alive causes him to recall just a little bit. The driving plot of the book is his quest, aided by his best (human) friend Georgia Thackery, to discover his original identity.

In the Towers Trilogy, Xhea states that it's not unusual for ghosts to forget details about their lives, though exactly how much varies from case to case.

Izuko the guardian of the Gate of Rage in the Japanese live action series Skyhigh.

In the Torchwood episode "Random Shoes", Eugene is Dead to Begin With and doesn't remember much about his life or anything about how he died, though his memories gradually come back throughout the episode as he sees things that remind him and helps solve the mystery of his own death, which turns out to be an accident.

In the Dollhouse episode "Haunted," a paranoid woman named Margaret Bashford expects to die violently, so she has a backup of her mind made every month. Sure enough, she is murdered and her latest memories, made three weeks before her death, are uploaded into Echo, so that Margaret!Echo can attend her own funeral and figure out who killed her.

In Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes all the characters are dead and living in a kind of afterlife/purgatory and only the main protagonists Sam and Alex can remember their former lives as, confusingly, they are alive whilst in this purgatory (at first). The series finale has the Big Bad forcing the characters to watch their own deaths on TV, only then do they remember.

In both the British and American versions of Being Human, Annie/Sally has forgotten that her death wasn't just an accident; she was killed when she had a fight with her fiance and he pushed her down the stairs.

Ghost Writer (if he is in fact a ghost) knows only that he used to be human.

Tabletop Games

Ghosts in the New World of Darkness are described as being shells left behind by the souls of the departed. As such, they tend to retain little sentience, mostly confined to sticking to people, places, or objects associated with their death or some unfulfilled goal, and repeatedly act out their death or try to resolve their goal. Mages are capable of temporarily restoring a ghost's living personality, and ghosts start "remembering" once they resolve all their ties and move on to the Underworld.

And then there are the geists. Their amnesia, however, is more a result of giving up some of their former humanity in exchange for power as an aspect of death.

The Old World of Darkness likewise addressed the issue in Orpheus. Weak ghosts are little more than spiritual echoes, reenacting their last actions, but unable to recall anything before or afterward. Giving them Vitality can temporarily give them a boost for info to help them move on. Unfortunately, their inability to act means they also make good targets for Spectres.

Before that, Wraith: The Oblivion likewise had Drones - ghosts bound tightly to their Fetters who are nonsentient and just keep performing the same actions over and over again until Oblivion claims them. Given that they don't appear to be sapient and letting them carry on will eventually contribute to Oblivion's power, they're considered prime material for soulforging, as they won't protest and you may actually be doing them a favor.

In Dungeons & Dragons's Planescape setting, this happens to petitioners in the afterlife and is tied into Death Amnesia as well. Souls of the deceased always pass through the Astral Plane before going on to the afterlife, where their memories naturally strip away - a resurrected soul follows the path backward and picks up their memories all over again, displacing anything they experienced as a petitioner. This means that, if you know how, you can locate a dead person's "memory core" in the Astral and plunder their secrets.

The Russalka was once a young woman who was murdered by being pushed into the lake, and can now remember little of her past life.

In the same game there is a ghost in the forest who does not remember dying, until you interact with her.

Neku in The World Ends with You starts the game without knowing anything even that he's dead. After the first week he does gain most of his memories back, but still doesn't know how he died. It's not until the very end of the game that these memories are fully returned to him.

In The Sims 3, every ghost seems to lose all memory of their past life. Friends, lovers, and family members have to introduce themselves and befriend them all over again as if they were a complete stranger.

The whole point of AMBER: Journeys Beyond. Ghosts wander in a strange limbo-world based around the moment of their death, echoes of which appear in the world as a haunting. They can't remember they died or even that the corpse they see is themselves. You have to take care of their Unfinished Business, help the ghosts remember the circumstances of their death, and remind them that they are indeed dead before sending them on their way.

Used in Ghost Trick, where the dead take time to remember who they were, and what they even looked like. The entire plot is spurred by Sissel's search to find out who he is. Sissel himself can't even remember a lot of basic concepts such as "science" or "jail", or even how to read. Of course there's a good reason for this— he never knew them to begin with. He's a cat.Ghost Trick uses some pretty interesting concepts to explain why Sissel has memory loss that's lasted more than everyone else, too. Apparently, if a ghost is somehow misled into thinking a body other than theirs is their own, they won't regain any memories. Conversely, once a ghost does identify their body, their memory starts coming back nearly immediately afterwards. Essentially, Sissel's memories stayed gone for so long because he was trying to remember the wrong person.

One notable example is Nageki, a ghost who has forgotten almost everything except for books. Even in his ending where he supposedly regains his memories, he still doesn't remember the full truth behind his death as he believes that he committed suicide in the library, not in the medical center. For that, you have to play the full version of the game.

In Holiday Star, we get to see a little of the bird afterlife. Forgetting everything while wandering across the stars is a prerequisite to being reborn.

Pretty much all of the ghosts in The Blackwell Series fall into this, as they can't find peace and move on to the afterlife before they are remember they are dead. The problem is that their death is often such a traumatic event, that most ghosts subconsciously avoid thinking about things that can remind them of the event, and some even actively attempt to suppress the memory, so they need a little push (and sometimes more than that) to regain the memory.

In The Dead Case, all ghosts seem to lose their memories. The library ghost gets his back after extensive research, while the church, hospital, and school ghosts regain theirs after being shown objects that remind them of important things. The protagonist is unable to regain his memories for most of the game until entering a serial killer's room reveals that the killer shot him to get him out of the way of murdering his fiance.

In Dark Souls 2, one side effect of the Undead Curse is gradual memory loss. It's implied that the player character remembers nothing at all, save their own name, and the fact that they remember that is a bit of a surprise to the Firekeepers who "welcome" you to Drangleic. Throughout the game, other Undead characters you meet will lose their memories as the game goes on, some more quickly than others.

Pony Island: The protagonist has been in Limbo for so long, they know nothing about themselves. Only through encounters with Baphomet, can you hope to regain any memories at all.

In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the main character Talion is possessed by the wraith of a long dead elf lord that has no recollection of his past or even his own name. As the story progresses with Talion recovering the wraith's relics and artifacts he remembers his past bit by bit and his power increases each time. His identity is revealed to be none other than Celebrimbor, the One Ring's very creator. With that said, its strongly hinted that it might not be the case as the Bright Lord DLC implies that just before taking Talion's body he still remembered his old self while declaring that "all will fear me and rejoice" and he used him to re-acquire his old powers.

Inverted in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, where it's stated that ghosts called back to the living world are unable to remember their afterlife. This becomes a plot point in the final case, where this trait is used to trick a ghost into thinking he didn't die, which the ghost's killer used to trick a witness into reporting that the victim was still alive hours after his death.

Web Comics

Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name features an undead Supporting Protagonist (or something) who has no memory of his previous life, including his own name. Hanna calls him whatever name he can think of at any given moment, trying to find one that will jog his memory; the author and fans generally call him "{...}" or "Zombie." He is trying to move on to create a new life for himself, though he admits to feeling guilty about whatever loved ones he has presumably left behind and can't remember.

Aradia "AA" Megido in Homestuck may be an example. She is mentioned to have "lost interest" in her various hobbies, and forgets what having emotions feels like.

While not actually losing her memories, Feferi seems to care less about whether what she's saying offends or not, whereas before her death she usually took care to be very polite and courteous and was willing to drop her quirk when requested, indicating a change between this and the last time she talked to someone. Why is she listed here? Because, stupid. She's D------EAD!

"Dream ghosts" that reside in the setting's pseudo-afterlife take a while to realize they're dead in the first place, as living characters visit it in their dreams. Jane and Jade memorably once assumed they were dead just because they were there, only to remember that they had been merely knocked unconscious.

Several other characters that are ghosts or have come back to life don't seem to have this going for them. Especially since Jaspersprite says that he loved his owner even back when she was a little girl and he was an alive cat.

Betelgeuse in Cobweb And Stripes remarks to Lydia that he has no memory of who he was when he was alive, and at some point hopes to find out.

Web Original

The Adventure Zone features an inversion: because the Voidfish's memory blockers only affect the Prime Material Plane, dead characters (including liches and spirits forced out of their bodies) are able to remember all of the memories they had been unable to access in life. The visions of the past that Magnus receives after having his soul knocked out of his body in Wonderland are some of the first clues that he and the rest of the main cast are actually interdimensional travelers from a parallel universe, who forgot an entire century and have been living fake lives during the twelve years since their arrival.

Western Animation

Ghosts in Adventure Time can apparently suffer from this trope, and need to remember how they died to ascend to the "50th Dead World." The episode "Ghost Princess" involves Finn and Jake helping the title character, as well as another ghost named Clarence, discover their pasts. It turns out she was called Warrior Princess in life, and Clarence was her lover, though they fought on opposite sides in a war. Clarence killed her, then was so miserable he ate himself into an early grave.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy